Posting early so u dont miss this celebrated film ! If u can, do RSVP on Facebook Event Page:www.tinyurl.com/MarchScreening

On Friday, March 27, Vikalp@Prithvi presents 'The Other Song' directed by Saba Dewan followed by a Q&A session.

About 'The Other Song':

Director Saba Dewan traces the rich history of India’s courtesan culture through a lost song sung in 1935 by Varanasi’s Rasoolan Bai which was recorded for the gramophone. It was a thumri that she would never sing again - Lagat jobanwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar (My breasts are wounded, don't throw flowers at me).

More than seventy years later the film travels through Varanasi, Lucknow and Muzzafarpur in Bihar to search for the forgotten thumri. This journey opens a Pandora's box of life stories, memories, half remembered songs and histories that for long have been banished into oblivion. It brings the film face to face with the enigmatic figure of the tawaif, courtesan, bai ji and the contested terrain of her art practise and lifestyle. The film also unravels the significant transitions that took place in late 19th and early 20th century around the control, censorship and moral policing of female sexualities and cultural expression.

Bhavana SinghThumri still has its origin in folk literature and music.. I hope the movie turns out to be a window to the past and reaches much wider audience.. Myself hailing frm UP , I will definitely watch d movie 'The other song' .1 week ago

WHAT HAPPENED IN HASHIMPURA 28 YEARS AGO? By Vibhuti Narain Rai (The writer was then Superintendent of Police, Ghaziabad. The article first appeared at IndiaResists.com)

There are some experiences that stick with you throughout your life. They always stay with you like a nightmare and sometimes are like debts on your shoulders. The experience at Hashimpura Massacre was such an experience for me, says Vibhuti Narayan Rai, then Superintendent of Police, Ghaziabad, UP. On 22 May 1987, in Hashimpura, a locality in the Meerut City, 42 innocent Muslims were killed in cold blood by the personnel of Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC).

The night of 22-23 May 1987, which I spent in the wild undergrowth along the stream flowing through the Makanpur village situated on the Delhi Ghaziabad border looking for any living souls amidst the dead bodies covered with blood in the dim light of my torch- everything is engraved in my memory like a horror movie. I had returned to Ghaziabad from Hapur at around 10 30 pm. District Magistrate, Nasim Zaidi was with me. So, I dropped him at his house before reaching the residence of the police officer. The moment the headlight of my car fell on the gates of the residence I saw an estranged and shocked Sub Inspector B. B. Singh who was the in charge of the Link road police station at that time.I could tell from my experience that something serious had happened in that area.I instructed my driver to stop the car and go off. B.B.Singh was so horrified that it did not seem possible for him to explain things coherently. Whatever he could convey while stammering about events in a disorderly manner was enough to shock me. I understood that somewhere in his station area the P. A.C. had killed some Muslims.

Why?? How many?? From where?? It was not clear. After asking him to repeat his facts again and again I tried making a narrative of the events piece by piece. According to the picture so drawn B.B. Singh was sitting in his office when around 9′ o clock he heard firing from the direction of Makanpur. He and everybody else at the station thought that there was robbery in progress in the village. Today Makanpur’s name can only be found in the revenue records. Makanpur today has tall magnificent buildings but in 1987 it was all barren land. Through this barren land ran a check road on which B.B. Singh raced his motorcycle towards the village. Behind him sat the station officer and a constable. They had barely covered a 100 yards on the check road when they saw a truck racing towards them from the opposite direction. If they had not ridden the motorcycle off the check road the truck would have ran them over.

According to them what they saw while trying to maintain their balance the truck was yellow in color and had 41 printed on the back. They even saw people in khaki clothes sitting in the back seats. It was not difficult for a police officer to understand that this was a truck belonging to the 41st battalion of the P.A.C. crossing them with some officers of the P.A.C.; but this made the situation more complicated. Why would a P.A.C. truck be coming from Makanpur at this hour?? What was the mystery behind the firing?? B.B. Singh got the motorcycle on the check road and again proceeded towards the village. The scene that he and his officers saw not more than a mile down the road gave them all goose bumps. Before the habitation of the village the check road crosses a stream. The stream goes ahead and enters into the Delhi border. There was a bridge where the check road crossed the stream.

As he reached the bridge and the headlights of B.B. Singh’s motorcycle fell on the undergrowth along the stream; he understood the mystery behind the firing. There were blood stains all over the place. Along the stream, in the undergrowth and in the water there were bodies with fresh wounds in them. B.B. Singh and his men tried to inspect the scene and to guess what happened there. All they could decipher was that there must be a relation between the bodies there and the P.A.C truck they came across on the way. Leaving the constable at the scene B.B. Singh with his fellow officer turned back to the main road. The headquarters of the 41st battalion of the P.A.C. was situated on the Delhi Ghaziabad Marg near the police station. They both headed for the headquarters.

The main gate was closed. Even after arguing for a long time the sentry did not give them the permission to go inside. B.B. Singh then decided to come to the zonal headquarters and tell me about the events.

From what I could understand from the narration it was clear that some event had occurred, the event was horrifying and that Ghaziabad could be in flames the next day. Since the past many weeks the neighboring district of Meerut was facing communal riots and these riots were moving towards Ghaziabad as well.

I first called the district magistrate Nasim Zaidi. He was about to sleep. After that I called the additional S.P. at the district headquarters, a few deputy S.P.s and magistrates and told them all to get ready. In about another 45 minutes we were heading towards the Makanpur village in about 7-8 cars.

Our cars were parked a little distance away from the bridge on the stream. No one had come from the village which was situated on the other side of the stream. It seemed that terror had forced them all to go into hiding in their houses. There were some police officers from the Link road police station though. The weak beams of their torches were falling on the thick shrubs besides the stream but it was difficult to see anything in that little light. I told the drivers to turn the cars towards the stream and turn their headlights on. An area of around 100 yards width was illuminated. What I saw in that light was the nightmare I was referring to in the beginning.

The light of the headlights was not sufficient due which torches were also carried by all the men. The stains of blood had still not dried up and blood was still dripping from them. The bodies of the dead were dumped all around some were stuck in the bushes whereas some were half submerged in the water. To check if anyone was still alive among the bodies seemed more important to me than to count and remove the dead.

We were about 20 people and everybody started looking in different directions to check if anybody was still alive. We would even yell out in between hoping that somebody would answer back, trying to tell them that we were not foes but friends and the injured would be taken to a hospital. But we got no reply. Disappointed some of us sat down on the bridge. The district in charge and I decided that there was no gain in wasting any time. We had to make strategies for the next day and we decided to leave the task of removing the bodies and completing the necessary paper work. We were about to proceed towards the Link Road station when we heard the sound of a cough coming from the stream.

Everyone froze. I leapt towards the stream. Silence fell over the place again. It was clear that there was a survivor but he did not believe that the people looking for him were friends. We started yelling out again and threw light on each individual body and in the end our eyes fell on a body which was moving. Someone was hanging by both hands from a bush with half his body in the stream in such a way that it was difficult for one to tell if he was dead or alive without proper attention. Trembling with terror and believing only after a lot of reassuring that we were there not to hurt but to save, the person who was going to tell us about this horrifying event, his name was Babbudin. The bullet had just missed and went scratching him. Unconscious he fell into the shrubs and in the stampede his killers forgot to check if he was dead or alive. Holding his breath he lay half in the water and half in the bushes and in this way he managed to cheat death. He wasn’t seriously hurt and he walked from the stream to the cars. He even rested on the bridge for some time.

When I met after 21 years while I was collecting material for the book I was writing on Hashimpura, at the same place where the P.A.C. picked him up from, he remembered that I offered him a biddi after taking one from a constable. According to what Babbudin told us that when that day during the regular checking around 50 people were made to sit in the P.A.C. truck they all thought that they were being taken to a station or a jail. The truck was taken off the main road about 45 minutes from Makanpur and stopped at distance down the road. The P.A.C. leapt down from the truck and ordered them to get down from the truck.

Only half the people had hardly got off when the P.A.C. started firing on them. The people still on the truck took cover. Babbudin was one of them. He could only guess what would have happened to the people who got off. The sounds of the firing probably reached the neighboring villages as a result of which noises started coming from them. The P.A.C. people again got on the truck. The truck reversed and again sped off towards Ghaziabad. Here it came to the Makanpur stream and the P.A.C. again ordered everyone to get off.

This time the horrified prisoners refused to get off so they were pulled and dragged from the truck. The one who came out were shot and thrown in the stream and the ones who didn’t were shot on the truck and thrown off. While Babbudin was telling us the whole incident we tried to assess the location of the first crime scene. Someone suggested that the first crime scene could be the stream which flows near the Muradnagar station which is situated on the road from Meerut to Ghaziabad. I called the Muradnagar station using the wireless at the Link road station and found that we were right.

The Muradnagar station had been facing the similar problem just some time ago. Some were found dead in the stream and some were brought back alive to the station.The story after this is a narrative of a long and torturous wait in which the issues relating to the relation between the Indian state and minorities, the unprofessional attitude of the police and the sluggish pace of the frustrating judicial system may be raised. ... See MoreSee Less

Aritry DasI hate the title of the article as much as I like the interview. The title seems to be quite propagandist in a not-so-nice way bearing some insinuation towards the feminists in general. The article as I perceived is more about safeguarding the right to free speech, lashing out against the threats of censorship imposed on any art form, prioritizing the spectator/reader's choice of a text and their capability to understand the same than Rakesh Sharma's generalised view on feminists as the heading would have us believe! Disheartening.1 · 1 week ago

Priya GuptaI have a question. When a judge claim that they are sentencing somebody to death because of the "collective conscience of the country", don't you think a documentary like 'India's Daughters' facilitates in formulation of a particular kind of a collective conscience? Isn't objectivity lost somewhere because Mukesh Singh said things which have nothing to do with his crime in legal terms?1 week ago

Rohit SinghSir, your documentaries have contributed a lot to our societies. But still, you're unknown to more than a billion people in this nation. I do not know about other, but as long as am living, your service as a responsible citizen will always be remembered by me. You're are a kind of gem which our country will never get. =D9 · 3 weeks ago

It is possible that the government or its net savvy supporters are indulging in illegal censorship of the internet. I first noticed this 2 months ago when they blocked vimeo.com where I had posted some video clips. After a public outcry vimeo.com seems to have been unblocked. But now since the last 3 weeks my site www.patwardhan.com may have been blocked without any formal announcement or supplying of reasons. The block is not uniform as some people can access the site while the broad majority cannot. The average daily visitors to the site have reduced from 1150 per day to 257 per day since the site blocking began.

If any of you cannot access www.patwardhan.com, please take a screen shot and post it on my facebook page (facebook.com/patwardhananand).

Judging from the varied responses received so far this is not an officially acknowledged blocking of all methods of access, but possibly a clever way of reducing eyeballs on material the system does not like. The result? Average visitors per day have effectively reduced by 80%.

We are still investigating what the exact cause may be. please await further news on this page. ... See MoreSee Less

Shardul MehtaThere are hundreds of gateway bypass sevices online. Use any one to access anything you want to. Try not using TOR, its a major security risk. So if you have anything sensitive, Do not use tor3 weeks ago

‘Our aim is to build a society which will not be bound by the dictates of arbitrary authority, comfortable superstition, stifling tradition, or suffocating orthodoxy but would rather be based on reason, compassion, humanity, equality and science'.

The CBI court dropped charges against senior Gujarat police officer Geeta Johri after it found that the CBI had not taken mandatory sanction from the state government before chargesheeting her in the fake encounter case.

Mohd Abdul NayeemOne after the other cases against the top cops and officials who have been involved in the fake encounters and genocide of a community, are dropped. What signal does it convey to the victims? They are already fighting a tough battle against the powerful State violence. It looks that the present govt is going to wash away all the sins of the hand in glove officials......Sad and shame on them :(2 · 4 weeks ago

Tamaash is a moving short fiction film on Kashmir. Yaadhum documents the early arrival of Islam in Kerala and its syncretic journey as well as the fact that this syncretism is threatened by growing fundamentalism in the 21st century.

On February 27, Vikalp@Prithvi presents two films followed by a Q&A session with the directors.
'Tamaash' | Directed by Satyanshu Singh and Devanshu Singh | 32 minutes
'Tamaash' has won several awards, including the National Film Award and those presented by Mumbai International Film Festival and International Children's Film Festival India.
Synopsis:
Anzar faces scorn from his elders for his poor performance in school and is constantly compared to the other school-kids. Forcefully and unreasonably expected to outscore the high-achieving Sadat in the next exam, he seeks the help of a mysterious stranger. But following his advice may have serious and unintended consequences for Anzar and his kid brother. A film set in Kashmir that is consciously non-political, and is almost a fable you would narrate to your grandkids. It will remind you what courage, loyalty and envy meant when you were kids. A film with drama and mystery and folk songs – 'Tamaash' is all this, and more…
www.facebook.com/pages/Tamaash/518174838262901
'Yaadhum' | Directed by Kombai S. Anwar | 56 minutes
Synopsis:
'Yaadhum' ('All') is a Tamil Muslim's journey in search of his roots and identity. In an age where it is commonplace to see Islam and Muslims as tainted by terror, this film gives us the other and more real picture of the arrival of Islam in India and its syncretic and peaceful coexistence with the cultures of the land it adapted to. It also hints at how this original identity is threatened by increasing polarisation in the region and in the world.
yaadhum.com
Screening Details -
Friday, February 27, 7 pm
At Prithvi House, Opposite Prithvi Theatre, Janki Kutir, Juhu Church Road, Juhu, Bombay
Entry Free | No Registrations Required
To RSVP on the Facebook Event Page: www.tinyurl.com/VikalpFilmInFebruary
To join the Vikalp@Prithvi Facebook Group: www.tinyurl.com/Vikalp-Prithvi
To view a list of the 100+ films screened by Vikalp@Prithvi since 2007, visit tinyurl.com/VikalpAtPrithviScreenings
For any queries, email vikalpscreenings@gmail.com

1 month ago

Screening of 'Tamaash' & 'Yaadhum' | Presented by Vikalp@Prithvi

February 27, 2015, 7:00pm

Prithvi Theatre

On February 27, Vikalp@Prithvi presents two films followed by a Q&A session with the directors.
'Tamaash' | Directed by Satyanshu Singh and Devanshu Singh | 32 minutes
'Tamaash' has won several awards, including the National Film Award and those presented by Mumbai International Film Festival and International Children's Film Festival India.
Synopsis:
Anzar faces scorn from his elders for his poor performance in school and is constantly compared to the other school-kids. Forcefully and unreasonably expected to outscore the high-achieving Sadat in the next exam, he seeks the help of a mysterious stranger. But following his advice may have serious and unintended consequences for Anzar and his kid brother. A film set in Kashmir that is consciously non-political, and is almost a fable you would narrate to your grandkids. It will remind you what courage, loyalty and envy meant when you were kids. A film with drama and mystery and folk songs – 'Tamaash' is all this, and more…
www.facebook.com/pages/Tamaash/518174838262901
'Yaadhum' | Directed by Kombai S. Anwar | 56 minutes
Synopsis:
'Yaadhum' ('All') is a Tamil Muslim's journey in search of his roots and identity. In an age where it is commonplace to see Islam and Muslims as tainted by terror, this film gives us the other and more real picture of the arrival of Islam in India and its syncretic and peaceful coexistence with the cultures of the land it adapted to. It also hints at how this original identity is threatened by increasing polarisation in the region and in the world.
yaadhum.com
Screening Details -
Friday, February 27, 7 pm
At Prithvi House, Opposite Prithvi Theatre, Janki Kutir, Juhu Church Road, Juhu, Bombay
Entry Free | No Registrations Required
To RSVP on the Facebook Event Page: www.tinyurl.com/VikalpFilmInFebruary
To join the Vikalp@Prithvi Facebook Group: www.tinyurl.com/Vikalp-Prithvi
To view a list of the 100+ films screened by Vikalp@Prithvi since 2007, visit tinyurl.com/VikalpAtPrithviScreenings
For any queries, email vikalpscreenings@gmail.com

I was away in Kerala without internet access for the last 3 days and could not express on this page my heartfelt horror and grief at the loss of our beloved Govindrao Pansare. 82 year old Pansareji was one of the most fearless mass leaders of Maharashtra who always fought for the powerless.

Much has been written about him so I will just add some less known things. Once many years ago when we used to screen our often uncertified Vikalp films at the CPI's Bhupesh Gupta Bhavan the police entered the building to disrupt our screening and confiscate our equipment. Pansareji who happened to be in town that evening came to our rescue. He ordered the police out of the premises saying they had no right to enter private property without a warrant. Such was his stature as a mass leader that the police meekly withdrew! More recently, Pansareji spoke out against the denial of bail to members of the Kabir Kala Manch and berated the government for this.

In the week leading to his murder, Pansareji had spoken out against the forces that glorify Nathuram Godse and had also spoken about the need to re-investigate ATS chief Hemant Karkare's death in light of the fact that Hindutva had targetted Karkare for his indictment of saffron terror and had the most to gain by his death.

The modus operandi of the killing is identical to the murder of the rationalist, anti-communal activist, Narendra Dabholkar. Two men on motorcycles shot Dabholkar when he was on his daily morning walk. Pansareji and his wife Umatai were also on their morning walk when two men on bikes shot them. Dabholkar's killers are still at large a year and a half later. Can there be any hope that a rightwing fanatic government will allow the tracking down of the killers of Govindrao Pansare? ... See MoreSee Less

Ajit Pakharenow the ear of true humanity will take rebirth as we dont believe in rebirth.....but ur sacrifice wil not go waste......this is time to fill the vaccum......hats of to comrade......lal salaam.1 month ago

Jai Shankar AgarwalaThe least we can do is protest ! AILU Supreme Court Unit is meeting tomorrow to register protest and demand the arrest of the assailants!1 month ago

Rohit BuchThe voters are guilty to because they brought the devil on the cough of India! Ghandiji is turning in his ashes!1 month ago

Every year Taran Khan, friends and family organize a spate of cultural events at Aligarh Muslim University to remember the secular and egalitarian legacy of her martyred father. I had the privilege to show our "War and Peace" there many years ago. May they get stronger each year.

His name was Khan – but he was no movie star. He was loved by people in Aligarh for his work as an academic and activist. Iqbal Ghani Khan, Reader in History at the Centre for Advanced Study in History of AMU, had deeply researched the science and technology of medieval India. On February 14, 2003,…

Fascists will use all means necessary to come to power and to stay in power. They will use both money power and lumpen power. They will free guilty murderers. They will try to jail or silence resistance fighters. If they cannot jail or silence them they will try to kill them. Dabholkar is dead. Govindrao Pansare and his wife Umatai are gravely injured and battling for life. Will this country wake up and take notice? ... See MoreSee Less